


Neutral Tones

by FlowCloud (Envy_The_Homunculus)



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Angst, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, POV First Person, POV Second Person, a mixture of both actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:00:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24310933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Envy_The_Homunculus/pseuds/FlowCloud
Summary: "On a night after you have just killed someone, you stop by, seeking solitude so that you can be consumed by your thoughts in just the right degree of loneliness."or, on a quiet night at LeBlanc, Ren contemplates on the subject of a certain detective.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 1
Kudos: 33





	Neutral Tones

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off of the poem "Neutral Tones" by Thomas Hardy, which I encourage you to read fully (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50364/neutral-tones), but the most important part of it is here:
> 
> "The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing  
> Alive enough to have strength to die;  
> And a grin of bitterness swept thereby  
> Like an ominous bird a-wing…"
> 
> Please leave kudos and a comment if you liked this, and tell me what's wrong if you didn't. Thank you!

On a night after you have just killed someone, you stop by, seeking solitude so that you can be consumed by your thoughts in just the right degree of loneliness.

You sit close enough to touch, just on the other side of the counter, but you know I won’t reach for you. You’re not sure if you’d accept any hand offered to you either way.

Your glove lies empty next to the cup of black coffee you pretend to like, even though I see the way your eyes reflexively squint at the bitterness every time you take a sip, as much as you can stomach. Steam wafts from it, dissipating into thin air. Your ungloved hand holds an expensive-looking fountain pen over your notes; it looks graceful and strong, the cuticles kept clean and the nails well-trimmed, but with all the wrong calluses for a student detective’s work.

We don’t talk much, despite how much you come here to partake in…the atmosphere? I’m not sure why you come here as often as you do. LeBlanc is a quiet place for sure, but you could afford better privacy. I don’t presume to think you’re here for me, even if I can feel your eyes piercing me the moment I turn my back, with an intense emotion that can’t be anything other than anger.

For the most part, we sit in silence, your eyes firmly fixed to the page in front of you. I don’t know what you’re thinking, what you’re trying to tell me, if you’re trying to say anything at all, and I think that’s the worst part, how I can’t know how much I’m reading into your silence compared to what’s actually there. But I can’t help but think you see me the same way, see _into_ me like no one else does. It’s romantic, but I know I can understand you better than anyone else. It’s irrational, but there’s not much rationality to the sort of lives we live.

Still, we talk sometimes. “Amamiya-kun, what do you think of…” and then insert whatever current events are happening. You broach the subject in a roundabout way, casual and seemingly spur-of-the-moment, but you always bring the topic around to bear upon me, pointed and sharp. My first impulse is to think that you just love the sound of your own voice, and you do, but you still fix your eyes on me whenever you deign to let me speak, and treat whatever I have to say as sacred scripture. I don’t know if your infatuation is genuine or just another piece of your plot to ensnare the Thieves, but based on your previous attempts, you aren’t exactly a master at subterfuge. So I don’t know. I don’t know if I _know_ you at all, protected as you are by the mask you wear, that varnish you’ve applied to your smile and your voice that makes everything you do innocuous.

But I want to know you better, and I think I know something, can see it with my third eye. I know that you clutch a gun in just the same way that I do. I can feel it in the calluses of your palm when we shake hands, yours warm and clutching at mine, desperate to never let go, that you’re haunted by something that’ll kill you one day, and that you hope what you have to give will be enough, in the same way that I do.

It will be enough, it _must_ be enough, you probably think to yourself. I can see it in the set of your shoulders, the barely hidden ambition which you show to me despite yourself, the sickle-thin grin you bare to the world even as you conceal its sharper edge. It has all been for this, this goal. You’re on the verge of it now, of happiness, perhaps hysterics, of something that must satisfy you, because if it doesn’t, if you have dedicated your life to something ultimately meaningless, something that leaves you hollow as you started…well, you’ll die before you have to confront it.


End file.
